"thirtysomething"

For the record, I decided not to go to Kemah for that crazy bridge-bridge-bridge-bridge 10K yesterday. I think it turned out to be a great decision for multiple reasons.

(1) I got to sleep in later.
(2) I saved that registration money for another day.
(3) Instead I hammered out a long (and really slow) run of 13 miles on the local trail, which I really needed to advance my running fitness.
(4) When I arrived at the trailhead, I enjoyed some bonus scenery as a woman nonchalantly changed into her sports bra while standing next to her car in the parking lot.

Anyway, this morning's recovery run capped off a 31-mile week, the most I've been able to log in months. There are now 120 days to go until marathon Sunday, and the real fun is just beginning.

For everything there is a season....

In the absence of a powerfully unifying narrative, this Friday brings the return of the rambling bullet-point blog post.

• Last night I found myself contemplating an appearance at the Toughest 10K in Houston. I recognize what's happening: My last running event was the Run Wild 5K way back on July 4, which was more like "shuffle meekly" than "run wild." So two months later "the itch" is back. I consider that as a good sign. However, I do have some reservations about going crosstown early on a Saturday morning, especially for that type of course. I'll probably vacillate on this one all day. If I go, watch this blog for the nutty race report....
• I am glad to report that I'm back to running outside with regularity . . . and certainly enjoying it more with the subsidence of summer heat. I finally acknowledged this change the other night when I noticed that sweat had not permeated through my shirt until mile 3 of that run. During the summer, that shirt would have been damp by the end of my warmup.
• On many of my runs, I find myself pausing at the spot where Jerry the motorcyclist was killed five months ago. The hit-and-run driver is still at large. On the edge of a detention pond, the family has erected a small memorial, complete with night illumination from a pair of those solar-powered landscaping lights. (Anyone that can help resolve the case should call CrimeStoppers at 713-222-TIPS.)
  
• I find myself wanting to believe the hype on the soon-to-be-released Windows 7. The battery on my three-year-old laptop died earlier in the week. While sorely tempted to just replace the whole thing with one of the affordable netbooks that's out, instead I decided to extend its life by buying another battery. I didn't like the idea of disposing of a still-mostly-working unit to just replace it with another Windows XP machine. So that represents both a little less e-waste for the landfill for now and hope that Windows 7 will be a mature platform when I'm finally ready to move on.
• I've become pretty cynical about the entire tech certification industry, but my day job has decided that it would be super if we picked up our CCNAs. For any of my readers that have done the Cisco thing, if you have suggestions or pitfalls to avoid, feel free to comment.
  
• Public Service Announcement: A couple of weeks ago, I put a plate of heat-and-eat wings in the microwave oven. The package directions lited a cooking time for 6-8 minutes, but somehow in my carelessness, I read a "5" there instead. So while they came out hot, but not really hot enough. The resulting digestive distress made for a mighty unpleasant night. So when cooking meat -- make it well-done and right, take it to one-sixty Fahrenheit!
  
• So far the first year with the Quinalt strawberries has been really unimpressive. After delivering a handful of good fruit in May, these "everbearing" plants haven't done much but drop runners over the sides of their pots. I collected a couple of these runners to attempt to start new plants. I have hope that the established plants will deliver a better crop in their sophomore season. At least it's cool enough again to grow beans again on the patio.
  

With the impending arrival of the equinox next week, I really can feel the change in seasons. Summer's definitely gone and autumn is here, bringing with it football weekends, outdoor festivals and even the first mumblings of Merry Christmas merchandising. With the return of the the fall racing season, surely I'll be able to put running-related updates on this blog more than once a month, right?

Now if you'll pardon me, I'll be returning back to my new favorite time-waster, Professor Layton and The Diabolical Box. A true gentleman leaves no puzzle unsolved....

Review: Roku Digital Video Player

YouTube proved that the masses were ready for Internet video. Every hour millions of people visit that site for a song, an informative message, or a quick laugh. But for a full-hour TV show or feature-length movie, I don't want to huddle around my laptop; lounging on the couch and watching on the 31-inch screen in my living room is a much better experience. This is especially true if I have company over.

For some time I had even been interested in the idea of building my own home-theatre PC (HTPC) to route streaming video to the television, but this summer I decided to try a cheaper and simpler alternative -- the Roku Digital Video Player. I've been living with it for three months and have had a positive experience so far.

The most important concern, of course, is exactly what programming is being delivered. The two main content partners at this time are Netflix and Amazon. As I've discovered, the two companies' offerings are plentiful and complement each other very well.

Netflix is most well-known for its DVD-rental-by-mail business, but it also makes a portion of its catalog available for viewing online by subscribers with one of the "unlimited" plans. Anything added to a member's Instant queue will show up as available to watch on the Roku player. (The queue can only be altered on the Netflix website, so I recommend having a laptop computer in the living room to fully enable the couch potato lifestyle.) The Instant selection seems dominated by older or more obscure movies and documentaries, but it does give members something to watch while they wait for the postal service to deliver the next DVD. Be aware that as Netflix makes and breaks deals for distribution rights, the list of titles available for Instant viewing is in a constant state of change. For example, I had added Happy Feet, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Eddie Murphy: Raw to my Instant Queue, but they were later made unavailable (marked as "Saved") before I got around to watching them.

For newer or more popular releases that are not available on Netflix -- or when I don't want to wait for a mailed DVD -- I can turn to Amazon and spend a few dollars with its Video On Demand service. Some titles can be rented for one day, others are purchased to "own" for permanent availability in "Your Video Library," and some offer both options. The available titles include both hit movies and television programs.

This brings me to my example of how the Netflix and Amazon selections complement: Thanks to DVDs from Netflix, I had gotten myself hooked on the drama Mad Men. I splurged and signed up for an Amazon "TV Pass" for the current season so I wouldn't have to wait for the DVD release to find out what happens next. Every Monday morning, the previous night's episode of Mad Men appears as available on my Roku player. Yes, it feels a bit strange to pay $1.89 per episode. But it is still cheaper than subscribing to cable just to get the AMC channel.

Earlier in the month, Roku added Major League Baseball as its third offering, letting MLB.com Premium members watch games online on their TV. At the price of a Premium membership, though, I can only see only die-hard fans of out-of-town teams finding this worthwhile. Roku has announced that it is working on partnerships to deliver more "channels" by the end of the year.

Physically, the Roku player is a very compact device, approximately the size of a small stack of CD jewel cases. Setup is as simple as it gets: Connect a cable to the TV, power up the Roku, and use the remote control to tell it how to connect to the Internet. There is an Ethernet cable port on the back, but I decided to take advantage of the built-in Wi-Fi adapter to join it to my my WLAN. (The longest part of the install was entering in my absurdly-long WPA key.) The remote itself feels like a "throwback" in its sparse design, being "chunky" in feel and sporting only nine buttons, but I like it. I'm still trying to figure out if I can use my universal remote instead. Once online, the setup routines for the Netflix and Amazon "channels" will display codes that are used to link the box to the customer's existing website accounts.

There is no internal hard drive to store programming. so the Roku player must always have a live broadband Internet connection to function. Every time a program is started, rewound, or fast-forwarded, a few seconds are needed to reset the buffer. (On the plus side, there is no hard drive to mechanically fail, either.) It will modify the video quality of the stream according to the bandwidth available. To my eyes the quality was very acceptable with a 3-Mbps downstream connection. Upgrading my DSL service to 6-Mbps enabled the device to achieve its potential of delivering high-definition video at 720p. Roku only packs a cable with RCA-style composite connectors in the box as standard, however. Consumers will need to bring their own HDMI or component cables to put the hi-def party into full swing.

There are other products on the market -- such as certain Blu-Ray players and TiVo DVRs -- that can also stream Netflix and Amazon content. But shoppers not interested in the other features that those devices offer may see the $99 Roku player as a do-one-thing-and-do-it-well alternative. I believe it's a compelling value for my readers that are Netflix devotees with broadband connections. Depending on the future partnerships Roku can forge, this little box could represent the beginning of a big alternative to the cable and satellite companies in the pay-for-TV market.

Stay tuned.

Estivation (es ta vā' shan) n. A period of torpor in the summer months

I'm very glad to be logging some real mileage again -- 19 miles last week, 20 miles this week. As usual for a Houston summer, it's blazing hot out there, and it's taking some discipline to not just curl up on the couch with a half-gallon tub of Rocky Road. With continued consistency I hope to be able to gently merge into an actual marathon training plan next month. My achilles tendon is still a little tender, but lately it hasn't truly flared up as it had been in the spring. I've decided to put the glucosamine supplement on the shelf indefinitely. I suspect it's been creating an adverse reaction I had not anticipated. I'll still be taking care to patiently warm up and stretch before every run, though.

My decision to come live in the web of trails that snake through the Energy Corridor is paying dividends. I love walking out my door and striding on crushed gravel mere minutes later. Speaking of "snake," I spotted a real attention-getter on yesterday's trek -- a Texas coral snake, one of the rare venomous species that inhabit the area. This specimen was less than a foot long and no thicker than my pinky. It was crossing the concrete path next to the creek in broad daylight. To my relief, though, it was definitely not interested in a confrontation with homo sapiens. I did find myself wishing that I had brought my camera to capture the striking beauty of its color banding before it disappeared into the underbrush.

Otherwise, August is a very quiet month, running-wise, and it's reflected in the thin selection of race events in the area. Once again I've embraced a lot of night running as a way to avoid the sun. I feel as if I'm in a state of anticipatory estivation, hiding away from the beating heat, patiently awaiting the refreshment of autumn.

Does badly broken English lead the way to better Chinese fixings?

This is so "well done" that I believe it was intentional. But this was too entertaining to not share with my blog readers. Below is word-for-word menu text from A New Restaurant I Won't Even Name (ANRIWEN), which just opened in a nearby Houston neighborhood:

---

ANRIWEN is a traditional Chinese-style restaurant. ANRIWEN pays great attention to the general visitor's health. So, you can taste the legitimate Chinese-style here. ANRIWEN requests in food choice aspect very high. For example: The meats, the seafood, the vegetables and so on. ANRIWEN uses the superior quality to achieve the low fat and the high textile fiber and to increase food nutrition

ANRIWEN forget vegetarian diet! ANRIWEN uses the pure vegetables rapeseed oil regarding our food. Therefore, no matter you are the common visitor or the vegetarian, all can enjoy all delicacies food in ANRIWEN.

Good news! Our chef's have several years experience to provide the birthday party, the company party and so on. ANRIWEN provides different situation food and the drink. Above this new service, lets the general visitors have the different choices.

Remembered: Only ANRIWEN is able to provide you a legitimate Chinese-style good food. Eliminates this, you can eat your health by the most beneficial price! No matter the western-style food or the snack, we all welcome you the presence!Can provide the good food for you, which is our being honored. In this, ANRIWEN thanks you the support and the presence!

ANRIWEN wish all our customers have a health and prosperity year

---

In!

Dear Treadmill,

I know we haven't seen much of each other lately. I wanted to let you know that I really appreciated your help in those good performances I enjoyed at the Heart of Katy 5K and the Bayou City Classic earlier in the spring.

Well, I'm going to be spending more significant time with you again. You see, this morning, registration opened for the Marathon Sunday events in Houston and my impulsive self registered . . . for the full marathon event.

The first time I registered for this 26.2-miler three years ago I was a little wide-eyed and naive about what it took. Deep into training I found myself waving the white flag and switching to the half before race day in 2007. After finally breaking through in 2008, I truly comprehend what it takes . . . and I still registered today anyway. So, yes, I am truly nuts. But it's like a little personal version of America returning to the moon.

T-minus 183 days, 19 hours, 13 minutes to launch....

See You Soon,

CurrentlyVince

One 5K endures post-Ike. A second 5K is born of Ike. A third 5K suddenly fades to black.

Event updates for the Houston-area running community:

• Hurricane Ike destroyed Maribelles Bar in Seabrook last September. August is an especially thin month on the running calendar in these parts, so it was nice to see that the 5K previously staged out of Maribelles will go on. Renamed to reflect a new host bar, the Outriggers 5K will run on August 1. Hopefully participants will be treated to another bounty of pizza and beer similar to the one I saw last year. Link to registration and more information on this race can be found at the On The Run site.
• Organizers of the Galveston Rebirth Race will use the one year anniversary of Ike's landfall as an occasion to run on the island.
  
• I was surprised to discover that there will be no Fired Up 5K this year. The Sugar Land Fire Deaprtment and First Colony Community Association had been jointly hosting this Labor Day race benefitting the Muscular Dystrophy Association. According to the fire department, the FCCA discontinued its sponsorship. It certainly could not have been due to a lack of interest, as the event appeared to progressively draw bigger crowds each year I ran it. One of the memories I have of that last Fired Up 5K in 2008 was simply being able to run it after being worried about Hurricane Gustav in the preceding days; Gustav was striking Louisiana instead.
  

Just one more shameless plug: These updates have been transferred to my Houston Running Calendar blog.

Run Wild 5K

It's been a summer of droughts. After flooding from the massive rain event in May, Houston's been dry as a tinderbox. And ever since my trainwreck-like race at the Heights Fun Run, I've been struggling to log any mileage at all, even taking a couple of zero weeks. But after a couple of decent run/walk sessions this week, I decided to go for the "comeback" on Independence Day at the Run Wild 5K. And it was a pretty good one:

Mile 1: 11:10
Mile 2: 11:06
Mile 3: 13:10
5K elapsed time: 36:31 per Garmin Forerunner 205

For those wondering, Run Wild is the timing services company that put on this race. There was nothing "wild" about it, unless you count the shopping at the boutiques in Uptown Park!

One of the most pleasant things about the morning actually came before gun time. When I arrived, the Uptown Park parking lots were full, so I decided to drive a couple blocks over to an apartment complex on the other side of Post Oak Boulevard. I parallel-parked on the street, stepped out, and discovered a twenty-dollar bill next to my car.

Coincidentally, when I registered yesterday, I padded on a few extra bucks for the race charity Special Olympics of Texas -- for a total of $20. I think I was meant to be at this 5K.

Happy Fourth of July!

Plotting the Winter Campaign

One month from now, registration opens for 2010 Marathon Sunday events in Houston. It may just be heat-induced delirium talking, but I'm giving significant thought to taking on the full marathon course for the second time. It's definitely not something for which I can "cram," so the time to get goal-oriented about this is now.

As a motivational prop, I recently ordered a custom Subway Cash Card with one of my 2008 photos on the front. I'm hoping it will simultaneously serve as a reminder of where I want to return and reinforce the eat-sensibly habit that helped get me there in the first place.

Either way, job number one should be to relieve my nagging achilles tendinitis issue permanently. When it first made it's rude appearance, we were in the midst of the busy spring running calendar. While I'd respond by backing off the mileage, I never gave myself permission to take any sort of real extended break from running. And it never really went away. Well, since that awful Heights Fun Run a couple of weeks ago, I have logged exactly zero miles. I also want to revisit my shoe selection.

Job number two would be choosing a training plan. In 2008 I worked up to race day on a Runner's World "SmartCoach" plan, but I want to explore other options.

One might think that having experience would be on my side would be a confidence booster. Ironically, knowing exactly what I'm getting myself into is making me nervous. We'll see if I'm really nutty enough to click "Submit" on that Active.com page again!

Heights Fun Run

Good News: As I had hoped, I'm enjoying post-race breakfast tacos after this year's Heights Fun Run.

Bad News: That's because I cooked some myself after getting home.

Good News: I was done running the race in only 11 minutes!

Bad News: When I finished running, I was still nearly two miles from the finish line.

Perhaps it was a mistake to leave my Forerunner at home this morning. I thought I'd "lighten the load" by just wearing my Timex Ironman watch. So I may have went out too fast, especially since I didn't see any mile markers on Heights Boulevard this year. The nausea in my midsection started a few blocks before the turnaround, so I started a walk break. Unfortunately, I never returned from the Puke Point in this race.

It was if I was seasick. Every time I even thought about picking up a jog again, my stomach would revolt. So I spent the next half hour being passed by everyone I passed at the start. I did have ample opportunity to thank each and every volunteer and police officer out there, so that was a plus. According to my Timex, I crossed the finish line in a time 41:10, the likes of which I haven't seen in four years.

Not surprisingly, the breakfast tacos were long gone by the time I got to the table. There's always next year....